


a grace too powerful to name

by cylobaby27



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Discussions of Suicidal Thoughts, Eating Disorders, Found Family Feels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 06:46:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12007284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cylobaby27/pseuds/cylobaby27
Summary: After they defeat the Hunger, Lucretia throws herself into the relief efforts and tries not to think about the family that she lost-- the family that she drove away. She deserves their hatred, and knows that there is no chance for redemption....Only, they don't seem to agree.





	a grace too powerful to name

When you’ve been fighting the same battle for more than one hundred years, what do you do when you finally win?

 

For the other members of the IPRE, the answer seemed to be ‘celebrate.’ From afar, Lucretia watched her old teammates finding their own ways forward in the world. Within two days, Magnus, Merle, and Taako had moved off the moon base in favor of living planet-side again. Lup and Barry were in Neverwinter with the ex-Reclaimers, and seemed delighted just to be in each other’s company again.

 

After Lucretia pushed the salary he’d earned onto him, Davenport found a boat and took to the sea. Their goodbye was awkward and short, too heavy with baggage to be productive. In the end, they’d shaken hands and parted ways.

 

All in all, her old teammates were excited to live in the world they’d created, and eager to move on with their lives.

 

Lucretia, on the other hand, had barely slept in the three weeks since the Hunger had been destroyed.

 

As soon as they’d gotten back to the planet and spread the word of their victory, Lucretia had started organizing aid for all the people displaced or injured by the Hunger. She was the only person in the world who had seen the disaster coming, and years of anxious planning gave her the resources and funds to start reconstruction immediately.

 

The employees that agreed to stay with the B.O.B. after their ultimate mission was completed adjusted to their new tasks quickly, but there was still endless organization that needed to be done on Lucretia’s end. Without Avi, who left when Magnus did, and Angus, who quickly realized he didn’t need Lucretia’s help to do good in the world, she’s running short-staffed, and there is a lot to fix on the planet below.

 

She was hunched over her desk, squinting in the low light and writing with both hands when the door to her office opened. She blinked and looked up.

 

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” Taako asked, strolling into the room. He was holding his new wand loosely in one hand, but she knew that meant little about his actual intentions. He could stow or draw it in a blink, depending on why he’d come.

 

“It got dark around me,” Lucretia said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

 

“You don’t even have dark-vision. You’re going to go blind,” Taako told her. “And that’s already going to be happening faster than it was supposed to, thanks to those Wonderland years.”

 

“I’m well aware,” Lucretia said dryly.

 

It was true. It was impossible for her to forget the two decades she’d lost in Wonderland, especially after seeing the rest of her crew reunited. Everyone had aged some in the last ten years, other than Lup and Barry, but Lucretia had jumped beyond them. After the decade she’d had scrambling to save the world on her own, she thought she might have looked older than them even if she’d never been to Wonderland.

 

“That’s not what I’m here, though,” Taako said, waving a hand dismissively. “I have a bone to pick with you, _Madam Director_.”

 

She folded her hands on the desk and steeled her spine. “I thought you might come by. I expected you earlier, if I’m to be honest.”

 

“You weren’t my top priority.”

 

The dismissive flippancy in his tone hurt worse than Lucretia had expected. The only thing worse than being hated by her old teammates was not mattering at all. She’d already lived so many years either forgotten by them completely, or existing as their distant employer.

 

She never expected things to go back to normal after they saved the world. She wouldn’t have deserved it if they had. But that didn’t make the sting lessen.

 

“Besides, I needed time to work on my speech,” he continued. “I have a _lot_ to say to you.”

 

Silently, she gestured for him to take the floor.

 

“Let’s go, then. You took everything from me,” Taako said. “I know I’ve said that before, but do you even realize what that meant? Did you see what I became when I lost every moment of joy and connection and power in my past? You let me think I was alone, that I had been alone my entire life. You let me believe that I meant nothing to anybody, and you thought that I would survive that?”

 

Lucretia remembered when Killian had first brought Taako, Magnus, and Merle to her for initiation into the bureau. She’d watched the boys for the first few years, but since she’d looked away to focus on her task, things had fallen apart. Merle was unattached and unhappy, unable to hold even the slightly personal connection. Magnus had lost his wife, and there as much pain in his eyes as there had been before she’d wiped his memory. And Taako was a _shell_ of the wizard she’d known. He saw himself as weak, stupid, and alone because that’s what she had done to him. She had taken his strength and his history, and left half an elf behind.

 

The first time he had joked about being an idiot, Lucretia had almost given up her entire plan. She had thought Davenport was the only person who had lost their entire _self_ with her actions, but once the boys were in front of her, she had realized the impact had been so much worse on all of them.

 

In trying to save Taako, she had sapped everything good from him.  

 

“You made the executive decision that I would be better off not remembering Lup, and didn’t even think what it would mean to who I was as a person to lose that connection. You—” He stopped and then folded his arms. “You’re barely listening.”

 

“I’m listening,” she said, shoulders heavy with the weight of all her mistakes.

 

He pursed his lips. “I feel like you’re not listening.”

 

“Taako, you deserve to air everything,” Lucretia said. “I’m listening. It’s the least I can do.”

 

“I expected more sparks, less…” He waved vaguely toward her. “When’s the last time you ate?”

 

“I’m sorry?” She blinked, trying to follow the sudden shift.

 

“When’s the last time you ate? You know, put vittles in your mouth? Let the choo-choo into the tunnel? Had some noms?”

 

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

 

“Have you slept at all recently?”

 

“Are you saying that I look tired?” Lucretia asked with a weak smile.

 

“You look like shit, to be frank.”

 

“No, Taako, I haven’t been sleeping.”

 

“Well, that’s the problem,” he said. “How are you supposed to fully appreciate my rant if you’re not even awake?”

 

“How am I supposed to help fix my mistakes if I’m wasting time eating and sleeping?” Lucretia shot back. “Food and sleep are indulgences that I can’t afford right now, and frankly? They’re indulgences I don’t deserve. Now, please, finish what you came here to say.”

 

Taako shook his head. “Up. Get up, come on.”

 

“What…?”

 

“The kitchens have been closed here for at least an hour, but I know how to get inside. Actually, I know at least five ways to get inside. Come on. I’m making you some food.”

 

“You’re… What?”

 

“Hop to it, Lucretia,” Taako said. “Look, you owe me, right?”

 

“Undeniably.”

 

“So do what I say, cupcake,” Taako said.

 

#

 

Cautious and confused, Lucretia let Taako lead her to the kitchens behind the cafeteria. True to his word, he unlocked the door without even pausing. The lock was more of a formality, since she had never thought it was necessary to guard the kitchens from her employees, but she wondered how many of her other security measures a wizard like Taako could bust through without trying. Now that the world knew about the Bureau of Balance, she should consider upping their security.

 

Taako instructed her to sit in a tall chair at the island overlooking the main oven, and then quietly retrieved an armful of ingredients. When Lucretia opened her mouth to ask again what was happening, Taako gave her a sharp look. She settled down again and stayed quiet.

 

Despite the shouting match on the horizon, there was something unexpectedly soothing about being in the kitchen at night. With Taako methodically preparing the food, it was almost like being back on the Starblaster.

 

As the cycles had gone on, there were more and more cases of insomnia from the IPRE crew members. Lucretia had spent endless nights journaling furiously. Not only did she want to save records of the worlds they had met and then lost, and hoped against hope that looking at the past would help her find the solution for her future. Often, once she had exhausted her hands, she ended up in the kitchen, and usually found one of her other crewmates already there.

 

Lup and Taako both loved to cook, and never seemed to get tired of finding new ways to use the food they found on each new plane to make dishes for the crew. Late at night, though, they always went back to trying to replicate comfort dishes from back home. It wasn’t always possible, depending on the spices they could find planetside, but they tried their best.

 

The atmosphere tonight, though, was different.

 

The apocalypse was over. They had _won_. It wasn’t the future that had Lucretia up late at night, but the past.

 

The future, though terrifying, had always had some gleam of hope, no matter how small. When it was the past doing the haunting, though, there was no escape. It was already too late.

 

“Here.”

 

Lucretia looked up. She had lost track of time.

 

Taako slid a plate in front of her. The dish on it, a pale, cheesy pasta, was a local comfort food. Taako took a plate for himself as well, but jabbed it with his fork without eating it.

 

Lucretia hesitated, and then took a bite. “You really are an amazing chef, Taako,” she told him.

 

“I know. Now. Back to what I was saying earlier.”

 

With a nod, Lucretia straightened up. “Please. Go ahead.”

 

“I’m still so furious at you for—Hey, keep eating,” he said. When she blinked at him, he made an exaggerated pantomime of someone slurping pasta.

 

Though her stomach was heavy with anxiety and sadness, Lucretia ate.

 

“Good,” Taako said. “Anyway, as I was saying, I’m _so_ pissed off at you. I already touched on you taking away the core aspects of my personality… What was next? Right. The rest of the crew. I wasn’t the only one who was left all alone. What about Magnus? What about Merle? You think Merle would have been such a shitty dad if he’d remembered us? You think Magnus would have wandered around alone for years after Julia died thinking he was abandoned to the world if he’d remembered his family? I’ve never met anyone with more casual suicidal tendencies than ol’ Magnus. A few years ago, he would have loved to die in a blaze of glory, and he never would have realized the past he was leaving behind.”

 

Lucretia winced. Though it hadn’t happened, she could envision it too clearly for comfort.

 

“Even Barry. He remembered us when he was in his lich form, but he was _actually_ alone. He knew he was Lup’s only chance, and you turned us against him. And don’t even get me started on Cap’nport…”

 

It was hard to hear Taako’s rant, though she knew she deserved it. With the taste of the warm food he’d made for her still in her mouth, though, the blows didn’t hit as hard as they had earlier.  

 

When he finally slowed down, she said, “I’m so sorry, Taako.”

 

“And that’s not even the worst of it,” he pressed on.

 

“Go ahead,” she said.

 

“You did all of that to yourself too.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“The rest of us were left all alone, but you had to make that decision and live with it. Alone. For an entire decade. Look what happened to you.” He gestured at her aged face. “You willingly cut yourself off from your family. You took the choice from us whether or not we could support you.”

 

“I…”

 

“Even if we all hated your shield idea, we were in this together. Were you so sure you couldn’t reason with us?”

 

“It wasn’t about stopping you from arguing with me! Living with what we’d done to this world was _breaking_ you! I couldn’t watch it happen anymore.”

 

Taako shook his head. “Then why not erase your own memories too?”

 

She had thought about it. Even years after she fed the voidfish her team’s memories, she knew that it would take just one more book to wipe her own as well.

 

“The mission wasn’t done yet,” she reminded him. “I couldn’t leave it behind.”

 

“Exactly. That’s what we all would have chosen. We had a purpose. No matter how hard it was, we wouldn’t have left the fate of the world down to one person. We were a team for a reason.”

 

“I _did_ it, though. We all suffered for it, but I carried us through.”

 

“And what if you had been hurt? Or killed? Who would have picked up the torch, hm?”

 

“I had contingencies in place,” she said.

 

“You had contingencies at the start! Us! Was it so much easier for you to do it on your own than to trust your family to handle it? What made you so much better than us?”

 

“ _Easier_?” Lucretia repeated. “ _Better_ than you? Taako, I had to be the one to remember because I was the one who made that terrible, horrible decision. I had to live with what I’d done, or I would have been an even worse monster than I already became. I didn’t wipe your memories for my own sake. I did it for you, and I suffered to keep going without your help. I suffered, Taako. Do you remember that year that I had to work alone? The year you were killed by the judges and I had to scrape and fight to survive? You think I would volunteer for ten times that because it was _easy_?”

 

“Good God, it’s easy to forget now that you look all old and wise, but you’re a doofus sometimes, Lucretia.”

 

She was stunned into silence.

 

“That’s exactly _why_ I’m mad at you, you ridiculous nerd. You made all of us suffer—including you, maybe worst of all—because you didn’t trust us to be your family. Would you have ever let any of us fall on the sword like you did?”

 

“Of course not,” Lucretia said.

 

“M _hm_ ,” Taako said.

 

“But none of you _would_ have! None of you would have made the decision I made. It was only right that I suffered for it. It was my choice. I did something terrible.”

 

“You could have taken it back at any time,” Taako reminded her. “At any point, you could have found us and made us drink Junior’s shit.”

 

“You know it’s not actually his—”

 

“As terrible as you knew your decision was, as awful as you felt, you obviously still thought it was _right_ , or you would have undone it.”

 

“I’m sorry, Taako. You’re right. I hated it, but I thought it was the only way to save us all. I always planned on restoring everything once the Hunger was defeated.”

 

“Why did you force yourself to suffer for something you thought was the only option?” he asked.

 

“I hurt you,” she said, voice breaking. “I hurt you all. I deserved all the suffering that I earned. Why are you here talking to me?”

 

“I’m still so, so mad at you,” Taako said, folding his arms. “But I want to be mad at you, and I want us to still be family. Do you get it? You don’t get to hole yourself up here alone any more. We remember, and it’s time we put our foot down on your self-sacrificing sanctimonious bullshit. You don’t get to do this all by yourself anymore. You’ll have to put up with us being angry. You’ll have to put up with us still having to recover from what you did. But you have to do it _with_ us.”

 

It took Lucretia a moment to process his words. “After everything,” she said slowly, “why would you still want me to be your family?”

 

“It’s not an optional process, dipshit.”

 

“I’m the Director of the Bureau of Balance,” Lucretia said, trying for officious to hide the tears welling up in her eyes.

 

“Yeah, but you’re still our Lucretia,” Taako said.

 

And with that, the tears broke free. She cried heavily, achingly. What was the opposite of drowning? It was like she had been trapped underwater for years with the weight of the entire ocean on her shoulders, and she’d only just been dragged to the surface. She didn’t deserve forgiveness, or even the possibility of forgiveness.

 

There was a slender hand on her back, rubbing in slow circles.

 

She thought she’d lost them _forever_. She had never believed that the day might come, but Taako— _Taako_ , the one she’d thought least likely to ever forgive her—was here.

 

When her sobs finally started to slow, Taako said, “All right, all right, I know I make the best pasta in the entire multiverse, but there’s no reason to get all weepy. You’re adding too much salt to the dish. If it tastes too salty, you can’t blame me. I can’t have you telling people I make salty pasta. Especially Lup. Girl already thinks I’ve lost my touch.”

 

Lucretia wiped her face and laughed. “The pasta was amazing, Taako.”

 

“I know it was,” Taako said. His voice was flippant, but his hand stayed firm on her back.

 

She turned to look up at him. His ears were quirked sympathetically. “How can you be doing this?” she asked. “Why?”

 

“Like I said,” he told her, “you’re stuck with us. When you fuck up, you don’t get to run away. You come back, let us yell at you for a _very_ long time, and then stick around. That’s what family is. Sorry, I don’t make the rules, my dude.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“Don’t thank me just yet. This does mean that we’re going to be dragging you planet-side a _lot_ , right? I need someone to taste-test my new pastries? Lucretia, mind-wiper extraordinaire, just volunteered. Oh, Lup needs someone to gossip about Barry with who isn’t her blood relation who doesn’t want to hear that shit? Ding, ding, ding, it’s Lucretia’s turn again. You think you can ban Magnus from getting a dog now that he’s off the moon? Think again. You’ll be his dog’s godmother. Dogmother?”

 

“I get it, I get it,” Lucretia said, shaking her head. “And… I’d be honored for all of that to happen.” She leaned forward slightly, and Taako took the cue to wrap her in a hug.

 

“I’m still pissed at you. After everything you put us all through, I’m going to give you shit for years. Maybe until we both die, and then I’ll make snide comments in the astral plane.”

 

“That sounds fair,” she told him, unable to hide her smile.

 

“Don’t be sappy. This is a punishment,” Taako said, stepping back and brushing off his blouse.

 

“I’ve missed you, Taako,” she said quietly.

 

“Missed you too, bubeleh,” he told her.

**Author's Note:**

> I know Taako is a Petty Bitch (TM), but I also think that he would NOT put up with Lucretia isolating herself again and continuing the pattern that got them into this mess in the first place.
> 
> Title from Quiet Uptown from Hamilton. (The grace is forgiveness, y'all.)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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